Want To Get Pregnant?

Just Sit On The Chair

ASHDOD, ISRAEL — Behind the racks of cucumbers, melons and herbs, in a dark and dank storeroom at the back of a supermarket, a 37-year-old woman is taking her turn on "the chair."

Gingerly, Margarite lowers her slender buttocks, leaning forward a little, then back, to find the most comfortable position. "You have to believe. If you have any doubt, it just won't work," she says, glancing at her husband, Nissim, his muscles bulging under his white T-shirt, as he grips the bag of weekend groceries.

"The chair" has magical or mystical properties, say the hundreds of women "Women who have never been able to get pregnant suddenly find they are pregnant, after sitting on the chair," explains Bouchira Vaknin, wife of the store owner.

It all began when Rabbi Yitzhak Kaduri, a Moroccan sage and authority on Jewish mysticism, came to open the supermarket, run by ultra-orthodox Jews in the port of Ashdod.

At some point the rabbi sat down on one of the old office chairs near the checkout. During the months that followed, six supermarket cashiers became At first the store owners thought nothing of it. But when they hired replacement cashiers, they, too, soon took maternity leave.

"It turned out that they had all sat on this one chair," Vaknin says. "The one sat upon by the rabbi."

Now the chair has been placed in a storeroom and converted into a mini-shrine, where sitters receive instructions from the chair's overseer, Rachel Anijar, on how to perform.

Women can only sit on the chair if "pure" according to Jewish ritual, menstrual cycle.

It is also best, she says, if the woman has had sex with her husband the night before. The sitting should last for 15 to 20 minutes.

The chair also works for men. In cases where male impotence is suspected, the woman can sit on the chair and learn "intimate things" to say to her husband later, which may help solve the problem, Anijar says.

In emergencies, she says, the man may also sit on the chair. "Men come here and pray. Then they hear that their wife is pregnant."